Description
As part of the European Topic Centre on Health and the Environment (ETC HE), Ineris (EDEN Unit) is working in collaboration with Joseph V. Spadaro (SERC) and Michael Holland (EMRC) to develop an economic valuation of the European Environment Agency’s (EEA) Environmental Burden of Disease (EBD) analysis.
This report explores different approaches for an economic valuation of the environmental burden of disease (EBD) due to air pollution and calculates the associated health costs for the results quantified by the EEA’s EBD for the year 2022. Health costs can be defined as being composed of direct costs (health treatment), indirect costs (productivity loss) and intangible costs (utility loss). Studies that value health impacts of air pollution typically start from the quantification of the change in incidence of disease, which is monetised using estimates of the average health cost of illness over its duration. The focus of the EEA’s EBD on air pollution is not on change in incidence but rather on change in DALYs or the single components YLL (Years of Life Lost) and YLD (Years Lived with Disability). This requires adaptation of methods previously used in studies assessing monetised health benefits, to value the outputs of the EEA’s EBD on air pollution. The YLL component is frequently monetised using the value of statistical life year (VOLY) covering utility loss only. Direct and indirect costs would ideally apply to the YLD component. How this can be done is explored in the report. The nature of this work is exploratory, with the purpose of demonstrating possible approaches to valuing EBD of air pollution economically. Results are, therefore, preliminary and subject to change as values are refined.
